We said goodbye to our dear friend Alex this week. He and his sister Molly joined our family when they were just a few weeks old, that was 16 years ago. Molly passed away last fall suddenly, Alex died after being ill for almost a year. It would be impossible to include in this one post all of the joy they bought to us though the years. From the moment we brought them home, they brought us so much laughter and kept each other company.
I'll share a couple of memories...
When they were brand new puppies, we lived in a very sweet neighborhood where a lot of people liked to walk their dogs. They always looked so happy walking around the block, people smiling, dog's tail's wagging and everyone in rhythm. I got the bright idea to do the same thing with Alex and Molly. So, we got little puppy leashes and hooked them on their little collars and we started down the drive way. Me and Molly, Bryan and Alex, and then......whooooosh! They were gone! We had the leashes and collars..but no puppies! They had finagled ( a mississippi word that does not require proper spelling ) their little selves right out of the collars and we were left looking at two "puppies gone wild" in the street, in the neighbors yards, around the corner, everywhere we looked..it was two short, collie-mutt puppy bullets zooming out of control! I started screaming at them, "Molly!! Alex!! Get back here!" Which of course worked because at just about 6 weeks old they already knew their name, phone number and zip code, right ? ? NO!! I might as well have been screaming "PIZZA! FRENCH FRIES! BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!" Because they had no idea what their names were, we had only had them a few days.. Bryan was smart enough to remain calm and said we should split up and track them down, quickly! ( Did I mention all the nice calm neighbors and their dogs were walking past us laughing hysterically? Yes, the dogs were laughing, too. It's my post and my dogs, so just go with it.) Some neighbors even came out of their house to see what the commotion was all about. Here's what they saw: two fuzzy blur's of collie-looking puppies flying around the yards, darting in and out of the street, followed by one grown man ordering "Alex" to stop and "come here" and one grown woman screaming frantically, "MOLLY, STOP! I MEAN IT! RIGHT NOW! COME BACK HERE!" Again, the dogs heard " BLAH, BLAH! BLAH BLAH BLAH! " We eventually caught them and when I got them back inside their fenced in back yard, I told them both, " I hope you enjoyed that trip! Because you will never get to see the front yard again!" And they didn't unless it was from inside the car looking out the window on the way to the vet.
Here's a glimpse of what they accomplished while we lived on Hemlock:
they used to break into the bottom of the house, pull all the cable out into the yard and crawl back in where it was cool and lay down..and the only warning we had was when the t.v. suddenly turned blue and then we knew they were on the loose; they also broke into our utility shed through a crack in the corner to hang out and we couldn't find them until we would bring food and then they would bust out and it sounded like the building would collapse..or when Alex decided he wanted to help Bryan smoke some ribs and by "help" I mean he hopped up with two front feet on the front of the smoker, took his long collie nose and grabbed the huge rack of ribs from the smoker and ran in the yard..only to discover they were too hot to eat! They also ate the wheels off our grill, the metal off the back door, and the handle off the water spicket..I won't tell you what happened when my Mother picked up a basket of apples in the back yard that Alex thought belonged to me...let's just say he had to go to "jail" for a few days, and when he came back, he was no longer singing tenor, he was officially a soprano.
I told you, there are so many stories..
But this is one of my all time favorite Molly and Alex stories.
When we decided to go back to school and move to Tuscaloosa, that meant moving the entire family. So the vet recommended we give Molly and Alex some medicine to relax so they wouldn't be "insane in the membrane, insane, got no brains!"..that was their theme song..to say they were hyper and happy together would be an understatement. So, that's what we did. Remember, I told them they would never see the front yard again, so after giving them the medicine, we backed the car up to the gate at an angle so the gate opened right up into the back door of the car. The vet said it would take a little while for the medicine to kick in, so they were still "super pumped about the move!" at this point. So, when we went to get them, we cracked open the gate and they shot out like two bullets right into the car! They never knew what hit 'em! We had captured them successfully and Bryan got behind the wheel. I hopped in the front of the truck with our cat Precious in her "car" or animal carrier. And we were off to our new lives! About an hour down the road, Bryan calls me on the cell and tells me things have changed drastically! The medicine worked great on Alex..he was calm, laying down in the back being good. It was a different story with Molly..we might as well had given her a giant hit of "e" or "f" or whatever the name of those wild hyper kid drugs are called. She was out of control with eyes blared. Bryan said she was hopping back and forth playing a little game called "front-seat, back-seat, front-seat, back...you get the idea". She also liked to box with her little paws and that was also amusing to her ...she was using the back of the drivers seat to box around on. While he was telling me all of this, Precious was moaning in her "car" like she was at death's door..when I checked on her, she wasn't dying, she was car sick..and you guessed it, she got sick. Then she was furious with me that I didn't immediately pull over and clean it up so she could be comfortable. So, Bryan and I finally found a place to pull over, me with Precious who is wailing, Bryan and his punk-rock Molly, and Alex who is asleep in the back. While Bryan comes to help me with Precious, I look over to check on the dogs...and that's when I saw it. Alex was no longer asleep, he was WIDE awake and behind THE WHEEL! He had both paws on the steering wheel ( I am not making this up..I couldn't, I'm not that smart) and Molly was jumping up and down in the back seat as if she was celebrating, singing"East bound and down, loaded up and truckin'! We're gonna do what they say can't be done!" I calmly walked over to Bryan and told him, he might want to go check on the dogs...I could take over for Precious...How we made it alive to Tuscaloosa , only the Lord knows.
I believe that right now, Precious, Alex and Molly are reunited in Heaven at our home waiting on us to get there so we can all spend eternity laughing and playing together..
And to borrow the words of one of the funniest women ever, "I'm so glad we had this time together".....
Molly Bear Wallace 1995-2010
Alex Handsome Wallace 1995-2011
